


De La Carne

by thenomansland



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 15:58:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19088317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenomansland/pseuds/thenomansland
Summary: Hannibal Lecter hides a secret that Will Graham is willing to find out.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [De La Carne](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398358) by [thenomansland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenomansland/pseuds/thenomansland). 



> The title means "Of The Flesh", sort of, and it's based on Virgilio Piñera's work, "René's Flesh". This is a translation of my fanfic "De La Carne", which is in spanish.
> 
> Hope you like it. Feel free to correct my mistakes, I'll appreciate it! It's the first time I do something like this.
> 
> Enjoy!

“How does it feel, Will?” He suddenly asks.   
  
Hannibal is staring at him with such intensity that he knows he cannot keep that game of theirs any longer. Will’s blue eyes go down to the dish that he hasn’t touched during the entire dinner, wondering why he has never seen the chef himself tasting his own delicacies in one of those nocturnal meetings. He doesn’t think too much about it, but he does have suspicions about the origin of his hallucinations.   
  
”It's as if I had known you a thousand lives before.” Graham says.   
  
“Are we talking about reincarnation?”   
  
“It’s not a belief I have accepted.”   
  
“Then, what is it?”   
  
It takes Will a few moments to understand that his dreams have dragged him into a feeling without a name. Maybe it’s some kind of fear, interwoven with the sweetness of a familiar scent — Hannibal’s scent when he comes closer, or caresses him with intentions that he never predicts. The scent of his clothes when he covers Will’s shoulders after a terrible episode. And, also the fragrance of the days when they only chat between sips of wine, the same drink that the psychiatrist is tasting at this moment.   
  
“It’s always you, shaping me in different ways every time.”   
  
“But at the end, it’s about us,” Hannibal pronounces.   
  
Will shakes his head.   
  
“I’m starting to believe that it is only about you, rejoicing in my damned misfortunes.”   
  
The host just smiles behind his glass, seeing him taste the first bite of his food. He won’t waste his time with lies. He prefers to let him know the truth, even if that means remaining silent.


	2. II

* * *

The last bite tastes as...  
  
“Suspicion.”   
  
Will raises his face, confused by the word that stuns in the silence. He bites a bit of the flesh, cleans the corners of his lips with the napkin in his lap — sips the old wine in his glass. Hannibal tilts his head as he watches him hesitate, curious about the thoughts his companion hides from him.   
  
“I beg your pardon?”   
  
“I can smell the suspicion in you, Will.”   
  
He is mocking the refined attitude of the psychiatrist as he leans on the table, intertwining his fingers afterwards. There is a broad smile on Graham's face, but Hannibal doesn’t seem to like his teasing. Neither, however, seems offended. Maybe it’s just the way to let it be.   
  
“What does it smell like, exactly?”   
  
It’s Hannibal’s turn to curve his lips softly.   
  
“Bitter.” He thinks about it for a moment. “Earthy.”   
  
“Earthy?”   
  
“As much as the dust that’s left behind when the rabbit knows the fox approaches, but not to help.”   
  
Will rests his back on the seat, swallowing thick saliva. The apple of Adam suddenly tempts the look of Hannibal, who knows he is desperate and in need of that sin.   
  
“You think I poisoned you.”   
  
“It’s one of my theories, yes.”   
  
“Will, I would never do that to the food.”   
  
“Unfortunately for me,” he begins, “I take it for granted.”


	3. III

“Tell me about your dreams.” Hannibal asks after he has removed the empty plate and put the dessert in front of him.   
  
Will’s mouth makes a straight, sinuous line while pressing it. His hands are on the table, next to the last dish that awaits him, only playing around with the edge of the knife that has remained between his fingers through the night. He guesses that the physiatrist gives him a little advantage, but knows that with Hannibal hope is nothing but uncertainty.   
  
“It feels like someone else’s memories,” he says, eventually. “As if I were just another person to carry them.”   
  
“Memories of people you know?”   
  
“No, from the past.”   
  
“Your childhood, maybe?”   
  
“From years and centuries before,” Will corrects. “I’m always in the skin of someone who looks like me, but has a different life. The Ancient Greece, the Victorian age, the First World War... No matter where, or how. We always find each other. It’s an unavoidable ending.”   
  
A sip of wine runs quickly down the throat of both men.   
  
“Should I believe that you wake up when meeting me?”   
  
“I wake up when I have the feeling of having to run away from you.”   
  
“Do you make it, Will? Can you get away?”   
  
“We’re...” his breathing escapes in a hint of laughter. “We’re connected.”   
  
“You seem discouraged to know it.”   
  
Will tilts his head slowly.   
  
“I’m just wondering if one of us would ever survive without the other.”   
  
Hannibal doesn’t expect the tip of the knife to finally snatch a grimace from his colleague when it pinches his finger. From it, a crimson drop emerges, and he feels hungry for that lively color. Will’s eyes are staring at him warily, in the silence of a fear sniffed in the air, along with the spark of a theory taken for granted. Then their glances meet, because Graham's gall rises, he enjoys himself sweetly when he licks his own wound.   
  
His host cannot be more pleased.


	4. IV

“It began two months ago.”

Hannibal’s hands are holding carefully one of the glasses, while the cloth of a white rag wipes the glass. His gaze rises from his task to the fruit basket, falling in love with the scent of the pomegranates that lie there. Afterwards, he suffers the fall that means for Will that their eyes meet. The perfume of his obsession made man blends with the fruit, and he enjoys the intimacy in the mere fragrance.

“It was in a castle, my dream.” Graham continues. “Your parents’ castle.”

“You vaguely knew the story of my life back then, Will.”

He nods, approaching his host to help him wash up the last dirty plate left in the kitchen. Such detail awakens in Lecter a curious feeling, understanding the chances that his boy has yielded to his deep-seated intentions. The water falls, drops splash in the silence. The nervous hand of the Adonis moves slowly, slowly when his companion bows to quench the thirst for him, his nose brushing the skin of the neck in sight.

They still give him that terrible lotion for Christmas.

“We met at the opera.”

“I thought it was too pretentious for you.”

“Ironically,” a smile creeps over the guest’s rosy lips. “I was the singer.”

The Lithuanian smiles against his skin. Will cannot stand the warm breath that hits him and turns around, ambushed by the closeness of their faces.

“I tried to kill you, Hannibal.”

“I know.”

It is not an answer he expected to hear, or perhaps, an answer he expected to endure. Whichever once was the reason, this forces him to hold on the countertop to stand up, moving away from him. Through his fingers are still traces of water, and the blood of the unhealed wound. Lecter clings to the ashes of his near presence, and with his face overturned by the pain of that rejection, walks behind his guest's back.

“It never worked.” Graham whispers. “Not in this life, nor in another”.

“Betrayal was always the price for your love, Will.”

“And my price was to die in your hands.”

Hannibal raises his chin in defence, but the other barely sees it. Will turns around, becomes part of that intimacy that he wanted to tear away from his heart as an outsider, he shudders with pleasure at being the marble chiseled by that look. It’s a pity that the eyes of the beast behold him with such sadness.

“What has changed since then?”

There’s a mirror behind his host, Will finds out. He can spy and see himself breathing with the same agitation than a race against death, he can taste the touch of a deity that will not be merciful to him. He can live of the fear that stalks him, and also of the monster that already licks his flavour of his lips.

Nothing will break him down more than not finding there another reflection.


	5. V

“Since when?”   
  
Will Graham’s curiosity destroys every piece of earthly pleasure that the notes of the instrument can arouse. The fingers of his benefactor halt on the keys, caress them in a goodbye that whispers, swears, the soonest of the returns. He stands then, and from his shadow the guest sees the beast born, because the most human that Hannibal is capable to be, Will brings it to life. The only reflection of Lecter that’s know to him is made of the flesh of his grieves, of a skin that he desperately has wanted to desecrate. And he will tear it from God’s kingdom from the heat of his exile.   
  
“Centuries ago.”   
  
Just a smile may be enough for the host to know he is one step away from victory, and the ground trembles under the Devil’s feet when he is seduced by the fear that in silence claims him.   
  
Will comforts himself with one more sip of whisky.   
  
“I suppose the dinners were not just mere courtesy.”   
  
Letter confirms those beliefs by simply serving a little bit of the amber drink without saying a word.   
  
“Our good doctor served his colleagues exquisitely tonight,” says Will, punished by his own sarcastic humor.   
  
He can no longer bear the presence that stalks him, which believed once his friend. But there is nothing left to do when he is savoring the fruit that his father, on high, has begged him not to touch. He does not want to resist the charms of the devil. He has touched for his soul the sonata of the sweet sin which is the power of eating the rude.   
  
“You must know, Will, that finding you in this life was not a choice, but a delicious coincidence.”   
  
“Didn’t you want to meet me?”   
  
“Sometimes feelings harm us so much, my boy... “ He allows himself to stop, only to praise the passion that those blue sapphires hide when listening to him. “I wanted it. Deep in my thoughts, I wanted to forgive you. But my compassion for you also longed not to have to do it.   
  
“And nevertheless...”   
  
O destiny, capricious misfortune of the gods! Of those who watch their children fall, rejoice over the stumbles that take life from the deer's mouth. If God exist, high in heaven, if faith is not blind, if He is and offers mercy, He doesn’t love them. Not his two damned banishments.   
  
“In your dreams, Will, could you see me at your side in the mirror?”   
  
He outrageously denies it, he surrenders with one step further towards his benefactor, wavering when the heat of that body takes him as an unforgettable prey. If he will have to know it in the end, let it be in death, because his life doesn’t deserve a pain greater than the betrayal to himself.   
  
The mortal flesh and the one which isn’t since a so long ago blend in a hug of goodbye. Hannibal narrows his Adonis in his arms, who searches in the beats of that monstrosity a sign of redemption. And the song of chaos screams in his ears when he finds in that chest the silence of the lambs.   
  
“No, because there is not soul left in your body,” Will whispers to his lifeless heart. “You have forgotten who you are, and only I can reflect you. I am...”   
  
“My design.”   
  
Graham nods. Once and once again his head moves to the sound of terror, thrown into the the territories that no man has crossed to tell. But Hannibal Lecter, his creator, his love of so many lives, isn’t one of them. It cost his blood to understand.   
  
He kneels in front of his beloved William, feeling the smoothness of the fingers that pull the golden hair of his, asking that his kisses don’t burn as punishment, that those hands stop undressing him and thus show the world his eternal shame. The viperine tongue meanders through the paths of his dear boy, cries out the tortuous gasps, the whisky that suddenly falls through the skin as soon as his adoration can no longer carry the cross in his back.   
  
Then, the fangs emerge and from the flesh come up the bloody drops that finally feed the thirsty. He drinks like a madman unleashed, he bites, devours; reborns from the elixir that for centuries he wanted to taste. Will collapses little by little, the crystal glass breaks against the ground, his body yields to the vertigo of the abyss when he has nothing to offer his deity. And those blue eyes find the others again, behind the echo that is the sentence that he desperately believes he deserves.   
  
“This is how it ends”, the voice of the Adonis says.   
  
“No, Will.”   
  
The victim steals the blood from the vampire’s mouth, dying in the caress that takes his last breath, fighting one last time when his teeth bite the lips with ferrous taste. He begs the life that has been taken away from him, claims the glory of gloating with another one of his misfortunes. Hannibal Lecter tastes like the best tragedy of his death. He tastes like himself.   
  
“This is how you and I arise.”   
  
The vampire pronounces, and lulls his boy.   



End file.
